CHAPTER XVII
THE GLACIER’S HEART
Probably the loose snow saved him from broken bones, but, in spite of its softness, the breath was knocked almost out of him. Gasping and smothering, he clawed his way wildly out of his burial. His eyes opened on a dim, cold twilight, on whitish-green walls that rose up and up till they inclosed a foggy-dim gap that was the outer air.
He crawled entirely out of the snow, immensely relieved to find himself unbroken, and got his breath back. He was at the bottom of a crevice, or crevasse, fifteen or twenty feet deep, and three or four feet wide, that extended into darkness both ways. The problem of getting out was before him. He would have to cut steps in the perpendicular ice walls. It did not look at all impossible, nor even very difficult, for he could make his footholds in both walls, straddling the big fissure as he ascended.
His hatchet had fallen from his belt, but he found it by groping in the snow. He cut a couple of steps, and raised himself into them. It was going to be more difficult than he had thought. The crevice was too wide to keep a foot on each side with any ease. He came down, and looked toward the dim farther end of the fissure. He had wanted to see the interior of the glacier, and it would be a pity to climb out without utilizing this opportunity.
He made his way along the bottom of the crack, which came to a sharp edge under his feet. It was not quite dark; a queer, pale twilight seemed to filter in from everywhere. Water was dripping from the top, trickling down the walls and along the bottom; and all at once his feet went from under him and he glissaded down a wet, slippery incline, unable to check himself. He brought up against something solid at last, on his back in pitch darkness; and somehow, he hardly knew how, he scrambled back up that slope almost as fast as he had slid down it. At the top he lay flat, out of breath, horror stricken at the thought of what he might have escaped.
He made his way back to the heap of snow where he had fallen in. In the other direction the crevice appeared to slope upward. It promised an easier way to the top than scaling the sheer wall, and he ventured along it, feeling very cautiously ahead at every step.
It did rise, wet and slippery and almost as steep as a stair, where lumps of stone in the ice afforded him all his foothold. He was hopeful of getting close enough to the top to hack a way through when the crevice ended against a hard, impenetrable slab of frozen gravel.
Impossible to go any farther this way, but, as he groped about in the dimness, he saw daylight through a small crack at his right hand. It was only a few inches wide, but he heard the dripping of water, and knew that it must be in connection with the upper air.
He widened it a little with the hatchet. There was certainly greater space beyond. In high hope, he hewed the ice out of an opening wide enough for his head to pass, and afterward for his body.
He saw a six-foot space, dimly lighted from above, narrowing away in both directions. The bottom, apparently of fresh snow and ice, was shortly below him. He crept through his orifice without any doubt, hung by his hands, and let go.
His feet crashed through the apparent flooring that collapsed all around him. He slid and slithered helplessly in a slush of wet snow that slid with him, down, it seemed, out of the light, till he found himself wedged fast. His legs and half his body were down in or through a tight opening, from which he could not extricate himself. He was too scared to think. Madly he hacked at the ice with the hatchet to which he had still clung. And almost at the first blow a large flake of the squeezing ice fell off, dropped, and he dropped with it.
He went down so unexpectedly that he did not even clutch at anything, and landed on his feet with a hard jar, slipped, fell and scrambled to his knees.
Complete darkness was all around him, except that, a dozen feet above his head, he saw the faintly dim outline of the opening that had let him through. He felt around him. His feet were wedged in a sharp angle. The walls appeared to diverge as they arose. Then for the first time he remembered the candles and matches he carried.
With trembling fingers he felt for them. Three only of the candles were left; the others had fallen from his pocket. After losing three precious matches, he got one of the lights ablaze.
The illumination was wonderfully comforting. The homely light quieted his terror. Almost calmly he surveyed the place where he had trapped himself.
At the first glance he saw that it would be impossible to climb without assistance back to that opening above, which was like a trapdoor in the ceiling of a room. He was in an enormous V-shaped ice crack, narrow at the bottom, widening to the top. Behind him the fissure narrowed abruptly to a mere crevice. In the other direction it seemed to extend some way into the darkness, growing smaller.
Lang quailed with a horrible sense of helplessness, of impending doom. He cursed his own panic, that had led him into this trap. With a little caution he might have got himself free up there, made his way back to his original entrance, and climbed out. Useless now to think of it! The only possible escape now seemed to be to cut and heap up quantities of ice in a pile so high that he could reach the roof of his cavern, and he began to hew into the wall almost hysterically.
He scraped the flakes and chips of ice back under the hole in the top. Working violently, he made a huge cavity in the wall, a huge pile on the triangular bottom. His hatchet went through into another opening. He was amazed, in a dim way, at the number of fissures that seemed to honeycomb what he had supposed a solid block of ice. They must be the result of centuries of warming and cooling, winter and summer, as the glacier flowed slowly down the mountain.
He did not look through into the new fissure he disclosed. He continued to cut, piling the ice chips, till he stopped, discouraged all at once, realizing the futility of this. The loose ice flakes gave no foothold; they slid and sank under him. Without completely filling the chamber he could never get himself to the ceiling.
In a nervous panic he seized the candle and made for the other end of the cavern, where there might be an outlet. It grew lower; he stooped, crawled on his knees; and then it ended suddenly with a black hole in the floor that struck him with terror. It seemed to go down to unutterable abysses.
He scrambled back again, and looked into the crevice he had cut into. There was a tall, narrow fissure there, just big enough to allow his body to pass sidewise. He enlarged the opening, squeezed through, and began to edge along the passage.
It really seemed to lead upward. He had a gleam of hope again. The walls were full of streaks and beds of frozen gravel, and he had enough revival of life to glance curiously into them; but they held no sign of emerald crystals. The passage grew wider, then narrower, and then began to descend. He was mortally afraid of the slope. The candle would not show what was at the bottom. He halted for long minutes, wondering, dreading. But there was no use in going back.
He went down with the utmost slowness and precaution. The slope, however, was only for a couple of yards, and then the passage rose horizontal, and then forked into two. One of them closed presently into a mere rift, too narrow for a cat; and he came back to the other. Along it he edged his way for some ten feet, and then stumbled and dropped through another hole in the bottom.
It was only six feet, and he could have pulled himself up again, but he felt weak and exhausted. He seemed to be in a sort of round cavity, and he lay huddled where he had fallen. There was no trickle of moisture there; the air was dry and dead, and heavy and silent like the grave itself.
He must have dozed involuntarily, for he awoke in a panic. Sleep was deadly. It would mean the frost-sleep, from which a man does not awaken. He got up, swung his arms, stamped his feet. His mind felt dazed. He forgot the opening through which he had dropped, and crept on hands and knees into a sort of burrow that led out of one end of his cavern.
How long he thus burrowed through the heart of the glacier he never could quite guess. Time was blurred to him. He tried to fix his mind on the next movement, excluding everything else, telling himself incessantly that he was sure, sooner or later, to find a way out. He must have gone over the same ground many times; in fact, he fancied afterward that perhaps he was much of the time merely passing up and down the same series of ice fissures, circling blindly. The first candle gave out. Anxious to save them, he crawled in the dark for some time, till the terror of it was more than he could bear, and he lighted another. From time to time he stopped, stupid with exhaustion, and half dozed, and was awakened by the subconscious warning. The icy chill penetrated his very bones. More and more forcibly it began to impress his mind that freezing was a painless death.
But the deep roots of self-preservation lived in him and drove him on. He tried to warm his hands over the candle flame; he tried to speak, to restore his courage, but the dead sound of his voice was horrible. He did not know any longer through what labyrinths he had come, and he took any opening that he could find, splitting space with his hatchet when there was not room to get through, and more and more often sinking down in a collapse that was each time more and more prostrating.
He put the candle out to save it and leaned against the ice, hardly feeling the chill. It seemed—he knew—it was not worth while to go on. Queer memories and fancies flitted uncontrollably through his brain like waking dreams. Shipwreck and danger—Boston—Carroll—Eva Morrison—they were remote like dreams, evoking no reaction.
He became entirely unconscious, and came back to himself with the usual start and scare. The dead dark frightened him. He fumbled for his matches; struck one, lighted the candle. As he held up the clear, bright flame he saw, through a thin veil of ice, a human face looking into his own!